Joshua P1 / Pawson / Transcript

  source                         David Pawson

 

 

◑Sharp Contrast

 

▲Now it is the sixth book in the Old Testament and in English it just seems to carry on from the 5th. We have the five books of Moses Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, Deuteronomy. And the story finishes at the end of Deuteronomy with Moses’s death. And then Joshua just seems to pick the story up at exactly the same point and Joshua, Moses’s successor carries on the leadership on God’s people. So what is different and why is this book not read annually in the synagogue where in Deuteronomy is.

 

Now Bible it looks no difference that it just carries straight on and the story continues but to the Jew there is a profound difference between Deuteronomy and Joshua. Deuteronomy is part of the laws of Moses, Joshua isn’t. it is quite a different book. If you really think about it Deuteronomy is packed of what I call legislation, it is packed with the laws of God. There isn’t a single law anywhere in the book of Joshua or in any of the books that follows it. We are out of the Law country or in other word we are out of the foundation of the nation; we are now into the outworking of the constitution.

 

So the first five books of our Bible are the basic constitution of the people of Israel, that is their foundation and the rest of the Old Testament is how it all works out so that when you put the book of Joshua which is the first none law book in the Bible against the first five book, you will see remarkable change. I will just try to indicate this.

 

▲See the next six books are all what we call history. In the next video that I am going to make with you we are going to see that the Jews don’t call this book history at all they actually call them prophecy. But I’m afraid we think to see them as history and the story continued.

 

But when you read those five books then these six books then you realize the contrast between them.

 

This is the law the foundation in Judaism and they are usually called the first five book "Torah" which means "instruction". And basically every Jewish rabbi is instructed in those five books and they read through once a year. But here we are having a Jewish scriptures, this are called the former prophets. We never thought of it like that. In the next video we are going to look at why.

 

▲Here(Pentateuch) we have God’s promises to them but here(rest of it) we have the fulfillment of those promises, how God kept His words. Here God says what He will do but here He does it. And once again this grace gratitude seems comes out. The grace of God is very clear in the first five books, (by the way) in the next six we shall see quite bit gratitude. Not quite enough but quite a lot. Here the redemption, here the righteousness. Here the legislation in the Law of Moses but here is the application of that law to their life and how it all worked out in practice. Here are the promises to bless obedience and in Joshua their obedience is blessed, they do what God tells them in Jericho and walls fall. Even if what God has told them what to do seems crazy, irrelevant, and unless but they did it and God blessed them and the land was given to them because they obeyed God.

 

But I am afraid there are also some examples in this book of the opposite of where they were disobedient and they were cursed. Unfortunately Joshua tells them they were given them land, 2 King tells us how they were taken away from them again.

 

▲It is the tragic story now of how the promises to bless them if they are obedient and to curse them if they are disobedient. These books tell them how the promises actually were fulfilled. They were blessed at first and then they were cursed. And from Joshua through to the end of Kings, it is a sad story of how they got the Promised Land and how they got lost it again.

 

The book of Joshua is mainly a book of obedience but the seeds of disobedience are there. They got Jericho but they did not get the nest town, Ai because they were disobedient. So the seeds were already there of losing the land but it did not happen for many centuries and then they lost it totally again.

 

▲Now here the covenant was established between God and the people of Israel but here it was expressed, it was practically applied to their life. So now we can see the first five books as cause and the next six books(Jos.~2Chron.) as the effect. And you can explain everything that happens in these books of cause and the next six books were the effect. You can explain everything that happens in these (history) books in terms of what was said here so now we are into a different part of the Old Testament. In English unfortunately if we don’t notice that because it has no separate headings it is just one book after another but I hope you can see that there is a sharp contrast and we are into something quite different.

 

 

◑Is it really happened? Yes. Of course!

 

▲Now one of the big questions about all these entire historical book is did it actually happen. Now I want to mention a trend in modern scholarship and it is very dangerous and that is to say that the truth in the Bible is not historical or scientific but truth of moral and religious value. Now let me spell that out.

 

People widely believe that the Bible is full of truths but what kind of truths? And to say it is a book of moral and religious truth but not necessarily scientific or historical truth, it is a very shaky position. Behind this distinction lies the concept of myth or legend if you like or saga. And the idea is it doesn’t matter whether it actually happened or not but it is still has a truth to teach us. Do you follow me?

 

Now of course there are parts of the Bible that are like that. Jesus' parables are all technically myth, it does not matter whether there is an actual prodigal son or not. The important thing is that the story has a truth in it. And it is very clear that Jesus’ parables are like that, that He made up story to communicate the truth. But when you start to say that the Bible is all like that then you are into very different territory.

 

So when you starts saying that the stories in the Bible like the story of Jericho, they have truths but don’t believe that they actually happened, they are myth containing truths, not lies but truth. Now that development has happened at phase it virtually treats everything in the Bible as parables that they are all just legendary stories made up to convey moral and religious truth to us, something like Aesop’s fables. And none of Aesop’s fables actually happened but they all contains truths, if you have read them you’ll know.

 

Now that began in the 19th century to be applied to the book of Genesis and it began to be said Adam and Eve did not actually lived, it is a myth, it is a story to communicate a truth. The truth is if you tell somebody not to tell something they want to go and touch it and that is the truth in Genesis 3. (I’m not advocating this; I’m just trying to tell to you what's been happening.) At first Adam and Eve were regarded as fable, as parable, as Adam was every man not a particular man, he was every man and Adam was everywhere, not a particular place. But it contains a truth that we could be dug out of it. To get to the truth we have to "demythologize" the story. You have to get rid of the story part and just keep the truth part of it only.

 

 

Well it soon began to be applied to others, to Noah next. Noah’s flood did not happen but the story of the flood has a moral or religious truth in its forms. So the Bible became not a book of history but a book of values. That is the favorite term being used nowadays. It has value but it is moral and religious not historical or scientific. Then it began to be applied to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then Jonah began to be treated as a myth even though he is presented as a factual man with a genealogy in the book of Kings.

 

And now it is even got written into the New Testament. In fact many now church figures question whether the virgin birth actually happened but it is a story that has a truth in it. You see it has a value for us but not historical.

 

Then it finally was applies to the resurrection of Jesus Himself. There are bishops saying that it doesn’t matter if Jesus' bones lying rotting in the Middle East that does not affect the story of the resurrection. And the story contains the truth that Jesus influence went on after His death.

 

▲Now this is a process that was particularly applied to the book of Joshua and the story of Jericho and the reason why all these develop was to make the Bible acceptable in a scientific age because this enables the miracles to be dismissed as stories and not actual events. And you can see the motivation behind this.

 

Well what is wrong with that? Because you see that book of Joshua is full what a scientific age says are impossible things. The walls of Jericho are not the biggest problem, the biggest problem is the sun and the moon standing still for a whole day and if it wasn’t them that stood still but the earth that stopped revolving, why doesn’t everybody flung off into space when the whole earth stopped in a jerk. Now that is claimed to be a myth. The truth in the story is that God wants to help us win our battles but the historical truth is not there. Now I hope I said enough to show you this development. It is very widespread.

 

▲So now when you turn to the book of Joshua, your face was rivers drying up and walls collapsing and sun and moon standing still. What do you make of all that in a scientific age? We’ll let as assume that they are fiction for a moment and they are simply legends. So we cut them out, we demythologize the book. What is left? If you cut the miracles out of the books of the Bible you are left with the purely human history and you might as well studied the history of ancient Tibet, I’m sure you have found some value in that. But this is serious, once you cut out the miraculous part and say that is ridiculous, it could not happen, you are actually cutting out God’s part in history and you are only left then with man’s part. What is the point of studying man’s history, it is three thousand years ago. I see no point on it at all. I might as well lecture to you on Chinese culture in the Deng dynasty or whatever it is. See it is irrelevant as that because in fact the miraculous is absolutely fundamental to the Bible history. It is so fundamental that if you cut them out there really not anything left to be studying.

 

▲Now let us take this a little further than that. Joshua presents us with real people in real places. Real places, the Jordan River is a real place, you can go and see it. I have baptized people in it. Jericho is a real place I have stood on the ruins of it. Jerusalem is a real place you can go and stand on the streets. And the people, the Canaanites were real people. Archeology demonstrates it. The Israelites are real people their descendants are still with us. Furthermore the book of Joshua claims to be written by eye witnesses, it is written in the first person plural, “We marched around the walls of Jericho”. Now that is a direct claim of people who said we were there, we saw what happened. why should it be thought that the scholar in the 20th century A.D. knows better what happened than someone who was actually there, the strange prejudice that comes to such a conclusion.

 

So the book claims to be a record of events written at that time and one of the frequent little phrases that comes in the book is “And it is there to this day” so people could go and check up on what has been recorded.

 

▲Now to dismiss this all as myth is a very arrogant thing to do unless you have you have very good evidence. Furthermore archeology had been busy confirming a great deal of Joshua. I’ll tell you more about the archeology of Jericho in a moment. But there are other cities that they conquered, cities like Hadzon and Lachish and the number of other cities. An archeologist have been very busy in all this cities and what they have discovered is that over a period of 50 years the entire culture of all those cities changed radically to a much simpler lifestyle, they were very sophisticated cities, they were very elaborate wealthy cities with a culture of their own. Yet over a space of 50 years, all these cities have been utterly destroyed and a new city built on them are the very different cultures. That is a remarkable thing to archeologist to have discovered. And the dating of that change exactly fits with Joshua’s account of how they took those cities, over periods of 50 years.

 

Now let us be quite clear that archeology can’t prove a miracle because it can only examine the results of the miracle and was not there to observe what happened at that time. Archeology confines fallen walls but it can’t find who knock them down. For that we either have to say it was a mere coincidence and it fall just the right moment. All we have to say is that is was a chance at all and the God is also busy at that time and to God knocking a wall is nothing, absolutely nothing.

 

▲Now they are also parallels to some of the events on Joshua, for example the Jordan River regularly dries up in time of flood. That sounds a contradiction but I tell how it happens. It is a very Meandering River as it goes down the Jordan valley. In flood when it meanders, it undercuts the banks on the curve and there we often even to this day when it undercuts one of the big banks, the bank falls in and temporarily dams the stream until it rises and goes over the dam and it may stop for 4~5 hours. So this things just have happened once, they happen again. Furthermore big buildings do collapse. I don’t know how many cathedrals in England have lost their spies and towers this way, they just suddenly collapsed. I’m not trying to explain the miracles away but I’m saying these are not isolated events. What is significant about in the book of Joshua is that they happen in the exactly the minute that God said they would happen, and happen just when they most needed.

 

So you have still got a problem even if you have tried to explain it the in a way in naturalistic terms. The heart of this is what God involve or not and if you remove the supernatural events you removed the divine activity and you reduce the Bible to a human activity in it then it becomes like any other history book of no more relevance to us today than ancient China.

 

 

◑It is the history of the God of Israel, not the history of what Israel

 

▲See the Bible is not the history of Israel, there is so much excluded. It is not a complete history of Israel. Joshua covers 40 years yet most of what happened in that 40 years is not recorded and the fall of Jericho spells about 3 chapters, it is out of all proportion to be history of Israel. It is actually the history of the God of Israel. The Bible is not the history of what Israel did but it is the history of what the God of Israel did. And if you cut out what He did, you cut out most of it because the reason why certain things are given a lot of chapter and other things no chapters, when God is doing something a lot of attention is given, when God wasn’t busy no attention. That is how the Bible is selected because every history is a selection of events according to what the historian thinks is important or significant. And the Bible historian says that the only important thing in our history is what our God did because it is not just the history of the God of Israel, it is the history of God and Israel. It is the history of their covenant relationship and it is the history on how they get on with each other and how they did not get on with each other and how God reacted to what they did. And so it is the history of the God and Israel, what He said indeed ‘He is the real hero of the drama’. I can put strongly as this, if God had not intervene with them then they would never gotten the Promise Land. It is as simple as that because humanly speaking it is an impossible task for a bunch of ex-slave who does not have a well military training to go in and take a well-fortified land and replaces a culture that was far superior to this in humanistic terms, it is impossible.

 

So if you cut the supernatural out, you cut God out, you have nothing left of what we call the history of the Bible, it is not the history of Israel. There must have been many, many things that they did that are not here.

 

▲We can put it like this, the covenant of Sinai is like a marriage. The betrothal begins with Abraham that is when God became engaged to this people. At Sinai He got married, the rest is this in Sinai was the honeymoon, it was a good deal longer than intended but the bride was not ready to look after a home yet. So the honeymoon lasted for far, far longer. But Joshua begins the marriage; they are home from the honeymoon now, they are setting up house together, God and Israel, in the place He wants them to live together, the place is chosen. Now how did the marriage worked out, that is the real question and I’m afraid it worked out badly. But since God hates divorce He never let them go, that is the beauty of it. He refuses to divorce them, had every reason to.

 

▲So we have this sad story of the marriage that did not work out but the fault is all on the wife side and God constantly calls Israel “My wife, I’m your husband”. And when she went after other gods He said, “Now you become an adulteress and even a prostitute”. But it is all in marriage terms, all the way through the Old Testament, what happened on Sinai was a wedding service but the wedding is one thing and a marriage is another. And working out the marriage after the honeymoon is when the real test begins. But it does not begin.

 

 

◑Now let's look at the shape of the book.

 

I always find it helpful to see the overall shape of the book, the structure of it, the outline and once I got that I can fit the bits in. too often I’m afraid we read the Bible in bits. Can you imagine reading an Agasa Christin's novel, ten sentences at a time ones a week. Can you imagine? I mean by the time you get to chapter 8 you have totally forgotten what happened in chapter one and yet we read the Bible that way which is the craziest way to read it. The best way to read the Bible is to right through a book at a time. That is why I’m making these videos to get you into the book. Every sentence in the book takes its meanings from the book. That is the context of every text and the text out of context is a pretext. And if you can understand that you will understand everything else.

 

▲Let us look at the outline of Joshua then. It is a sandwich in three parts. Two thin slices of bread and a lot of filling in the middle.

 

There is chapter 1 and then chapters 23 and 24 are the bread in the sandwich and they are all about this man, Joshua.

 

Then the prologue if you like is his commission from God and the epilogue is his final sermon and death and burial. So this book covers the life of Joshua from the age 80 to the age of a 120, 40 years. Interesting enough that is exactly the same period of Moses’ life covered by Exodus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, from 80 to 120.

 

So these two men have the same period of leadership. The difference was that Moses was a law giver as well as a leader, Joshua was only a leader and law giving is finished.

 

▲In the middle, chapter 2-22 is a simple account of how they took the land the God had promised them in spite of the fact that it is already occupied.

 

Chapters 2~5 talks about entering the land. How they got over the Jordan and into the Promised Land for the first time. one lovely little touch id this, the day they got into the Jordan, “what is it” stopped, Manna stopped, and for the first time they have fruits and cornflakes and they had a proper meal. Interesting as soon as they got out of the Jordan God stopped feeding them. Now you have to feed yourself but He have given them the land full of milk and honey. So that is entering chapter 2- 5.

 

Chapters 6~12 were how they have conquered the land and their strategy is terrific. You divide to conquer. And so Joshua drove away straight to the middle of the Promised Land and having divided the enemy troops into two half that they can’t line up against them, he then cleans up the south and then cleans up the north. Brilliant strategy and God showed him how to do it. So he conquered the center first then the south, then the north.

 

And then in chapter 12 we have a list of 24 kings that Joshua defeated. Now of course the king is not necessarily king of an empire, the leader of a tribe would be a king. Then came the task dividing the land up between the tribes who conquered it.

 

So we have 3 simple parts of the middle of Joshua,

-entering the land,

-conquering it and then

-dividing it up.

 

And that is then they have a national lottery, but more of that later. Literally true, they had national lottery. Lotteries are biblical, right up the day of Pentecost and then they become wrong and I’m sure you know why that is. But remember they chose the replacement of Judas Iscariot by lotteries. But they did it not because they are appealing to chance but I’ll tell you why they did it later.

 

▲Now if you got the shape of the book of Joshua, "sandwich", his call and commission which came from both God and the People. That is going to be a very interesting point. Then he led them to enter the land, to conquer it, and divided it properly among the different tribes. And then he preached the final sermon to them, a magnificent sermon. “Choose this day who you will serve. As for me and my house I will serve the Lord.” Tremendous dying word, you remember the man’s dying word. That is his last message and then he was buried.

 

◑Well having got the shape let us begin to look at its ingredient detail,

 

very simple structure and a very obvious outline. I have to point out that I’m afraid the chapter division in our English Bible is so often in the wrong place. I wish I was able to do it but in fact I honestly believe it should never have been done. I believe very firmly that the Bible should never have chapter numbers in it and never verse numbers. You would then have to know your Bible. But we become text people as if God gave us a box full of individual verses that we encode to support anything that we wish to prove and the Bible becomes a sort to prove text to people and you can prove anything you like from the Bible. I can prove atheism from the Bible, there is a verse that says there is no God in the psalms. The goes on to say the fool have set in his heart there is no God but there are the words there is no God. You can prove anything from the Bible by proving text.

 

But the context, God gave us a library of books. He did not give us one book He gave us a library of books and each books have its own character therefore we have to study the book in whole if we are going to understand the Bible's message.

 

▲So let us look at his commission first. He was 80 and the call came to him from two directions. I like this. I believe we need this double call if you are going to remain faithful to God. You need a call form God and you need a call from God’s people. And if it is really a call from God, God’s people are going to recognize it and confirm it. Too many people say God has told me to do this and it hasn’t been confirmed by God’s people. Others have been forced into Christian work because God’s people have told them to but they haven’t heard from God about it. But when you’ve got both, I am now in a traveling ministry, I haven’t chosen it but I live out of a suitcase but I heard a direct call from God through a prophetic word and I checked it out with the elders and the elders after weighing it carefully says this is from God and that made me secure. I can do it; knowing it is double confirmation, God and His people. Look for that double call.

 

 

So Joshua was called by God, God said now Moses is dead. Well now Joshua knew that, but God said, “Moses is dead. Now you.” And He said. “I will never leave you nor forsake you”. That is the promise. Moses got them out of Egypt; you are to get them into Canaan. And those two tasks are very important.

 

▲He said you will prosper and be successful. It does not mean you will become wealthy. The word prosper has been misunderstood in the Bible, it does not mean wealth but there is a prosperity gospel which has got holds in a lot of people. But prosperous mean to achieve what you have set out to do. That is a wonderful promise. “May the Lord’s people prosper”. Not mainly become wealthy but they succeed in which they set out to do for the Lord.

 

▲God said there are two things that are very important. Number one is you are morale. When you are going to battle, tactics are very important, strategies are important but the thing that is going to win the battle is morale.

 

World War II is turned on General Montgomery; he became insufferable in victory as Winston Churchill puts him unconquerable in battle but insufferable in victory or something. But nevertheless the battle in El Alamein, North Africa that squeaky little voice, “We’re going to beat this chap, we’re going to win this battle” and a new voice of morale raised the 8th army in the desert in World War II. That was the turning point of the war. And it was largely on morale.

 

And that is why God said to Joshua your leadership will depend on morale, be of good courage. You must be courageous. You must say we are going to win. Your courage will take the battle to victory, very important point.

 

The second important point is morality. God said, “Joshua you must keep my statutes, you must obey my laws”. Morale and morality are the two things that God requires of the leader, interesting, aren't they?

 

▲Well Joshua went and told the people, “I’m now your leader, Moses is dead." You know what the people said? They said "be strong and courageous" and the people actually repeated word for word what God had told him privately. What a lovely confirmation, what a witness. And the people said this, you might smile at this but they actually said to him, “Just as we fully obeyed Moses, we will now obey you.” Now you may have laughed to that but actually you shouldn’t because they had. This is a new generation, remember. The older generation hadn’t obeyed Moses but these were young men, this was a whole new generation and they had already conquered Moab and Ammon when they obeyed Moses. So they weren’t quite so disobedient as you thought when I read that. They were genuinely meant it, they said we obeyed Moses and we are going to obey you now but be strong and of good courage. We do not want a leader who gets cowardly or get doubts about the crusade. May the Lord be with you as it was with Moses, they said.

 

▲So now we come to the actual heart of the book. He led them to enter the land, conquer it and divide it, all relate the land, the land, the land and dominate the whole book. Now Jordan was the barrier, it was in flood and it was 20 feet deep. There are no bridges and the floods are well on the water this time of the year. It was the flood time, the rainy time.

 

▲The first thing he does before entering is to send spies in but he is not going to send 12 he sends two. Perhaps you remember that two spies came out with good report but he sent only two now not 12.

 

Listen, faith is not fool hearted. Jesus emphasizes ‘sit down and count the cost before you go to battle.” It is very wise to sort out the situation. Find out what you are facing. Fool heartedness is not faith and there is a very narrow dividing line between the two. Some people who do things by faith are being really foolish, they haven’t sorted all out, and they really do not know what they are taking on. That is not faith, faith isn’t blind. Faith looks at the situation. Send spies now and find out what is the situation. And above all he did not want to report on the military mind, he wanted to report on their morale. What is their morale like?

 

 

▲Well the spies found lodging in a brothel with a prostitute called Rahab, she became an ancestor of Jesus, the most incredible story, a prostitute. She took them in and hid them. The men of the city have heard that spies that came in and they came looking for them and she hid then in the straw in the roof. And when the men have gone, she sent them west. She said, “Don’t go back to the river they will be looking for you. Go further west into the hills and then in a few days go back”. She saved their lives. Why did she do it? She said “Because I believe in your God, He is going to give you this land and I want to be on your side”. That is faith, incredible faith. one resolves this that she is held up in the New Testament by two of the writers as a wonderful example of faith, not a good woman but a woman of faith. And God can do more with a bad woman that have faith than a good woman who doesn’t have faith. We often forget that.

 

So here was this prostitute, she hid them and saved their lives. So they were actually remembering the blood of the passover lamb. They said “hang something scarlet out of your window, and we won’t touch you, we will passover your house”, interesting, isn't it? So she hung something looked like blood out of her window, a scarlet cord. Therefore her house was the only house that did not fall down.

 

▲Well now that is what happened before. What happened during the crossing into the sea? Well the Jordan dried out. But it dried up just as the priest’s feet that are carrying the Arc touched the water. Yes it means further up the river the bank came in and dam it temporarily. But why did it do it in that moment. See there is so many coincidences in the Bible that is statistically can’t be, the ark is much too high.

 

So the people got across on dry land virtually whereas the spies would have to swim across earlier. What was really happening? This generation has never seen the crossing of the Red Sea so God is doing it for them again. How lovely. They heard about the Red Sea but did they really believe that God can do such things. They were whole new generation. So now they know that the God of their fathers is with them too. That is what I believe what happened, a repetition of the Red Sea for their new generation.

 

 

Joshua P2 / Pawson / Transcript

Source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaZw8ux0WyY

 

 

Joshua Part 2 (unlocking the Bible Series)

 

David Pawson

 

 

▶Now after they crossed the Jordan, they stayed at Gilgal for quite some time. They put a can of stones (stone files); they took 12 stones from the bed of the Jordan and made a little can of them at Gilgal as a reminder of future generations of how God dried up the River for them. Remembrance is a very important part of Old Testament piety constant to remember what the Lord has done for you. Of course, Christians are the same we take bread and wine to this as remembrance. We need constant reminders of what has done in the past and their favorite way is to erect cans of stones and especially 12 stones one for each tribe.

 

They also did something else. This all new generation have not been circumcised so all the men in this new generation were now circumcised. It meant they had to stay in camp until their bodies are recovered and they are in pain. They are very vulnerable to be attacked at that time. Had the Jericho people realized, they could have marched off and really walked over them at that time but they did not and after few days they were ready to go.

 

The manna stopped as soon as they crossed the Jordan because in the other side it is very fertile. If you go to Jericho today it is the whole oasis, the best grape fruit and oranges you’ll ever taste are in Jericho. I see some of you have been. And as soon as they go over there they have food and vegetable and food again. Then they called the place Gilgal which means 'rolled away' because God had rolled away the reproach of Egypt. They could forget Egypt now, they are now in.

 

▶Now a lot of strange things happened. Joshua decided to have a personal recognizing of the town to walk around it by himself and he went by night. He was walking around this town when he came across an armed man. And he said 'whose side are you on?' the man said 'No'. I think it is lovely answer. Whose side are you on? Are you on their side or us? No. Then the person went on to say important thing as whose side are you on Joshua? 'You are on God’s side?' and it was a captain of the Lord’s host. I believe that means a senior angel, an archangel. I don’t believe it was a son of God but I believe he was a senior archangel, captain of the Lord's hosts. But you are entitled to what you believe. What happened was Joshua was being reminded that he is not the highest officer in the Lord’s army but he was an under officer. It is gently to remind him.

 

So they set about conquering the land and as I have told you they drove away in the center first and then cleaned up the south and then cleaned up the north, brilliant strategy.

 

◑Jericho

 

▶Now the small space given to the first two towns and any others later that is because the first two towns were terribly significant, one positively and the other negatively. one was a complete victory and the other was a disaster, Jericho was a victory. Now Jericho is still there even ancient Jericho, the modern Jericho is a mile down the road.

 

Now here are some rather poor photographs but this is looking across the Jordan valley to the hills of Moab. Beyond, the Jordan is running there. Here is the oasis of Jericho. And in the middle of it, heap of rubble is, it towers above everything else. It is just a big heap of dust apparently. It is what we call a 'Tell'. In other words. Tell simply means the ruins of the city or least of many cities that had been built on top of the each other as a city was destroyed. So they built another on the top of it, so gradually a manmade hill emerges. You might have noticed in some old villages in the England that the front doors of the cottages are way below the street level. That is because the street has been built up on top of it, and the Tell is formed that way. So archeologist, one method is to take one level and then the next level and then the next level but that destroys each layer they go down. Another method is to take a slice right out of the middle and sees it like a sandwich cake and then notice the particular pottery in each layers dated and so on. This is what they have done in this mount. It is just this long mount here looking down from it from the air, this is what you would see. Here are the fruit trees of the Jericho oasis. But here is the old, Old Testament city. Nobody is living in it now, it is just a heap of rubble and ruin as you can see but they have actually cut a trench right across the middle and unearth the oldest building in the world, which I will show you in a moment.

 

They have discovered that Jericho is actually the oldest city in the whole world. To our knowledge it actually dated from 8000 B.C. In fact there is one building in it, a round tower with a spiral stairs inside of it. You can go down but they have to put a grid over it because people are wearing the stones way but this round fortification is 8000 B.C, it is ten thousand years old and that are the oldest building in the world. They found that by digging this trench right through the middle.

 

They have also found a lot of features of the city and one unusual feature that it has double walls, two walls. The outer wall and then a fifteen foot gap and then the inner wall, the outer wall was 6 feet thick and made of rock and the inner wall was 12 feet thick and made of brick. That was the kind of problem that the Israelites faced. That is a mighty big fortification but something had happened.

 

Now let us look at Jericho. That is a very over simplified cross section of the Tell and you can see how the different ages of cities have been built on top of each other. There is not much of the city left just a little bit that is the late bronze city in the time of Joshua. The main road that you drive along is here. The bus will take you alongside this mount of dirt and the spring which supplies all the

water for Jericho is just alongside it. Lovely fresh water but if you remember in Elisha’s day that spring became radioactive and have to be cured with a miracle again.

 

But here we have the different cities, the Neolithic, the pre-pottery age and then the Neolithic pottery age and then the early bronze, the late bronze, ion age and finally bits of the later but now it is just a rough dusty thing. And they found buried bits of wall here that is where they found the double wall. Now then because of that wall Jericho was very limited in size but the population grew. So what did they do? They decided to build houses over the two walls bridging them actually just to find more space. So it is a very crowded little city with houses actually sitting on top of this 6 feet wall then the gap and then the 12 wall. The walls were about 30 feet high.

 

 

Now bear in mind that it is already on this layers of previous cities. Can you see that the walls were the actual weights of houses on top of them are not very strong? Can you see that? Again I am not trying to explain the miracle I am trying to show you the situation as it was. A slight earth tremble would bring the whole lot down whether it was an earth tremble that God used to bring that or not, I don’t know. It I could even have been quite feasible that in fact a large sustained noise would have done that and it is very interesting that God told them to blow this horns and it says immediately when the horns were blown the walls came down. You know that some singers can burst the light bulb if they get the right note. It maybe that God knew that those walls were already procuring balanced on these slopes and had the extra weight of houses asking for collapsed.

 

▶Whatever, I do not know. The fact is that God says you must march 7 times once a day in total silence and on the 8th day you blow. And they blew these horns and you can imagine all those horns blowing on the same note and the people shouted as laud as they could. And after 6 days silence the walls collapsed and the houses on them except for one because if you remember the prostitute Rahab, her house was on the walls. God saved one bit of wall and the scarlet thread fell out of the window saved her life and her family. That is she became the great, great, great grandmother of King David, and she became the great great great great great great great great great great great grandmother of Jesus Himself. And putting in the genealogy of Matthew one, that is a great story. Well they did not even have street fighting they just walked in the city and took it.

 

▶But God said this city is the first fruit, it is mine. You don’t touch a thing in it. And in that way God told them the victory is mine not yours. You do not deserve anything from the city, this is my victory. You can conquer the other cities and you can lout the other cities but you can’t lout this city and we know that the men did.

 

◑Ai

 

The next place they went to is a place called Ai further up the hill. That is all that is left of AI that is the best photograph I could get of Ai it is just a heap of ruins but it was a flourishing city and they made two errors, two blunders.

 

▶Number one is 'over confidence' and Joshua said we do not need too many troops for this one it is easy conquering this land. How fatal it is to think that because God has blessed you ones He will be doing it again or because you have success in one’s field that will be repeated.

 

So often when I have been to an occasion where God is really been present and blessed us, the immediate reaction of people after is we must do it again. I said no we must not do it again because you are thinking to go out and do just you do before.

 

That is what Samson said, “I’ll you go out as I did before”. You can’t repeat God. And they were over confident and thought that only a few troops would get Ai.

 

▶More than that a man called Achan had stolen something from Jericho, he stole some nice clothes and he thought they are no use to God but I can make use to them and he stole some gold as well and he took it.

 

Now when Joshua’s troops first attacked Ai they were routed and they fled. Joshua came back to God and said, “God why did you let that happen now the words will go around the whole country that we are not invincible. We are finished.” He blamed God for it. God said "Joshua it could be your fault, you know? Find out who took the forbidden thing in Jericho." That is why they call the tribes to gala again the used lottery and by lot they settled on this tribe then they got the different clans together and by lot they settle on this clan and they got the family in the clan together and by lottery found the family of Achan.

 

▶Now why did lots work in the Old Testament? The answer is very simple. They believe that God was in control of any/every situation and that when (just for sake of argument) they toss the coin God could catch it and turn it the right number of times to tell them what He wanted. That is the theory, theologically as it thoroughly sound, if God can pull down walls of Jericho He can certainly determine lots.

 

They use lots deliberately so that man had no influence in the situation. We do that as well, we toss a coin that for who goes into back first at the cricket match that is to stop any person's choosing. But the difference is when they cast lots they believe it allowed God to choose because He could control a lot. And that is why they did it right up to the day of Pentecost, after that God’s spirit guided them. So we do not need to toss coins now we have God’s spirit to guide us.

 

But in the Old Testament days that is what they did. The priest carried two stones inside his breast plate a black and a white stone and they call it the Urim and Thumim, one means yes and one means no. they would go to the priest and the man would go to the priest and say does God want me to marry this girl or not and the priest would close his eyes and pull out the stone, if it is a black stone the answer is no and if it is the white stone, it is yes.

 

I wish we could have guidance that way now. It would be very much simpler and easier. Just go to the pastor and say pick a stone for me and then he knows what to do. Actually God wants to have more personal relationship with us than that, He wants to work it much more personally but that was the way they did it and we shall see that is the way they divide the land later. So they cast lots and the lot fell on Achan, as later the sailors on a ship heading for Spain cast and the lot fell on Jonah. You’ll find this again and again that God controls the lot, He does not control the national lottery in our country but he does control the lot in the Old Testament and that is important.

 

▶So Ai was a disaster and Achan and his family had to die. They clearly knew what he had done and they welcomed it, they were glad to have the clothes and the gold. But one man sin causes the people of God to fail. It is almost frightening isn't it? that one member of the church could have the same effect. When the sin in the camp, you can’t sin to yourself, it can affect everybody else and the people of God.

 

◑The Other Events

 

▶Well finally they reached mount Ebal and they obeyed Moses.

Moses said when you get to the mountains, in the center; there are two mountains, Ebal and Gerizim. He said you are to stand on both mountains, some of you, and on one mountain you shout blessings and on the other mountain you shout the curses. And if you go to those two hills today there are just near Shechem and there is a kind of an amphitheater, both hills are hollow on the face towards each other. So can you imagine a huge two natural amphitheaters? You can hear perfectly right across the valley and there they stood and they shout at the blessings and the curses and the reminder, the covenant.

 

▶Then they went on to the south, they clean out the south and that is when the sun stood still. They were attacked by five Amorite kings led by the king of Jerusalem, the man who called himself lord of righteous. Jerusalem was still in enemy's hands and he led five kings to attack them in the valley of Ajalon. Here is a photograph at the book as you can see of the valley of Ajalon with the sun. That is the place where it happens, where the sun stood still. Now what do we make of that?

 

I’m going to read you something. Written by Mr. Harold Hill, the President of the Curtis engine company of the United State, a consultant in the American Space Program. I think one of the amazing things that God has for us today happened recently to our astronaut and space scientist at green belt Indiana. They were checking on the position of the sun, moon, planets out in the space, where they would be in a hundred years and a thousand years from now. We have to know this in order that we do not send up a satellite and it collides with something later on in one of its orbits. We have to lay out the orbit in terms of the life of the satellite and where the planets orbit and that the whole thing will not go wrong. They ran the computer measurements backwards and forward towards the centuries and it came to a halt. The computer stopped and put up a red signal which meant that there is something wrong either with the information fed into it or with the result that compared to the standards. They called in the service department to check it out and they said it was perfect. The head of the operation said what is wrong. Well we found that there is a day missing in space in a lapse time. They were puzzled and there seemed no answer. Then one man in the team remembered he was told at Sunday school of the sun standing still. They did not believe him but there is no attentive which is forth coming. They asked him to find it in the Bible and he did in the book of Joshua chapter 10. The space men said there is a missing day. When they check the computers going back into the time it was written and finds it was close but not close enough. The elapse time which was missing in Joshua’s day was 23 hours and 20 minutes not a whole day. They read the Bible again and then it says in the book of Joshua ‘about a day’.

 

These little words in the Bible are important but they were still in trouble because if you can’t account for 40 minutes you will be in trouble a hundred years from now. 40 minutes had to be found because it can be multiplied many times over in orbits. Then it was this same man remembered somewhere in the Bible it said that the sun went back backwards and the spacemen told him he was out of his mind but hey got out the Bible and found Hezekiah in his death bed was visited by the prophet Isaiah that he is not going to die. Then Hezekiah asked for a sign and Isaiah said this “And this shall be a sign unto thee from the LORD, that the LORD will do this thing that he hath spoken; and the shadow shall go forward 10 degrees or go back 10 degrees. And Hezekiah answered it is a light thing for the shadow to go down 10 degrees, neigh but let the shadow go back 10 degrees and Isaiah cried into the Lord and he brought the shadows 10 degrees backward by which should have gone down on the sun dial of Ahaz. 10 degrees is exactly 40 minutes, so 23 hours and 20 minute in Joshua plus 40 minutes in 2 Kings make the missing 24 hours which they have to log in the log book as being the missing day in the universe. Make of that what you will. That is where is happened.

 

▶At this point they begun to divide the land and they did it with the national lotteries so there will be no human influence on the choice. And Joshua sent out surveys and they came back with the complete survey of the land. It has a fascinating little land, size of Wales. It has purely green bit in the Middle East, the Arabian Desert is this (East) side and the Negev of desert is on the south. The rain comes in the Mediterranean and drops these hills first and then on the hills over the riff valley. That is all it is, that is the Promised Land but it was divided up, surveyed and they gave by lot, the portion to the tribes. Two and a half tribes, one to this part of the land over the other side of the Jordan which is Trance-Jordan as we call it today. And so Moses had made them promised that they could have that land provided they came and helped their other tribes to conquer this side. If they helped their brethren to get this land, they can then go back and settle that way. so that is what happened, two and a half tribes settled here and the other nine and a half settled on this side and the land was divided and everybody was happy with the division. That occupies quite a few chapters of Joshua.

 

▶They were of course special city is, they had to be six cities of refuge three other side of the Jordan when people guilty of man slaughters flee and not being killed for having murdered. And they were also cities for the Levites; it is all there in the book of Joshua.

 

◑So we come to the last two chapters,

the final epilogue where he preaches his magnificent sermon.

 

There are just two things I want to say about this. He is an old man, a 120, called at the same age as Moses’ 80 but now he knows he is going to die.

 

It is amazing how many people in the Bible know when they come to die. Even Christianity knows the way of death as well as the way of life. There is a man at Bakens field who wrote all of his relatives when the doctor told him he had reached the end of the road and he said 'come and stay with me, come and see the way how a Christian dies.' What a challenge!

 

So the great men of God, when their time comes they know they are going and they usually leave behind them a message for which they will be remembered.

 

▶The first thing we notice is the office of leadership. Joshua did not appoint a successor, Moses did Joshua did not, because for now on one man can’t handle. The people was scattered, one man would be inaccessible to many of the tribes. From now on each tribe had to have their elders. That is a very significant move. It actually failed and the people wanted one man leadership again and demanded a king but it is not God’s will, God’s will was that there is one elder in that tribe that should takeover the tribe because that means that people have immediate access to the elders and that is a very important principle.

 

Once you build an hierarchy with a man to the top he becomes an accessible and it is very important that the will of God for the people was a local elders in immediate contact with the local people but they did not accept that and it did not work but that is God’s will.

 

So he reminded them of the covenant and he reminded that God had promised not only to bless but to curse. He promised both and he said God always keep His promises. He brought us into this land but He won’t stop dealing with us now. Interesting that Joshua gave all the credit for getting the land to God. He took no credit himself that he had led them, he said, “God brought us in, God fought for us, God gave us this land, God did it and you should be grateful of Him.” So he made them take an oath of loyalty to God.

 

▶In chapter 24 a unique thing happens, He speaks in the first person singular as he does in chapter 23. But in chapter 24 ‘I’ means God, he is now prophesying and his last message was prophecy from beginning to end. Though he still says ‘I’ where in chapter 23 means Joshua, where in chapter 24 ‘I’ means God Yahweh, always the God of Hosts.

 

This is what God said through Joshua, He says “I have done all this for you.” There is just one statement of God that I love, “So I gave you a land on which you did not toil and cities you did not build and you live in them. You eat from vineyard, on olive trees that you did not plant. You did not but I gave them to you. I have given you all these and now out of gratitude, Joshua speaks again in his own name, “So fear the Lord and serve Him and be faithful to Him and throw away all other gods. That is when he spoke that magnificent statement, “AS for me and my family we will serve the Lord”.

 

Now I said that is a choice. You have the land, whose god is going to be your god now, now that you had what you want now. That is a very significant challenge and they said we will serve the Lord. So is it right? I’m going to put that on a stone here and he set up a stone of witness. Three times they said we will serve the Lord.

 

▶The last few verses are two burials. The boreal of Joshua, the boreal of Joseph’s bones that all the way for 40 years they have carried a coffin out of Egypt. As well as everything else they actually carried a coffin all that way with Joseph’s bones in it because his dying wish was burry me in the Promised Land. Now at last they have buried Joshua. They buried Joseph’s bones, and they buried Eleazar the son of Aaron. So there is a triple funeral that rounds off this book and it says this that as long as Joshua and his generation of leaders lived the people were faithful to God but when the next generation came things went roughly bad.

 

One of the biggest problems was passing their faith on to the next generation, it is really is. For a second generation of Christian’s children to be as enthusiastic as their converted parents who first came to the Lord, it is not easy. That is a problem that follows the Christian world for a long time. Each generation of Christians has to rediscover God for themselves. And although they may hear of what God did for their parents and grandparent that does not make the children go.

 

▶So now let’s summarize what we learned form Joshua. As I read Joshua these are the lessons I have learned. I can sum it up in two simple sentences.

 

Without him they could not have done it. But without them he wouldn’t have done it.

 

Now those are the two very important lessons. There is a balance here. It is so easy to go overboard and put all the responsibility on God or to put it all on us. But here is a biblical balance, without God we can’t do it. But without us He won’t do it. Notice the change of verb it is not as without as He can’t, it is as without as He won’t. This is the beautiful balance that goes all the way to the Bible, with God all things are possible, without Him He chooses not to work with us. He needs us, He wants us. We are called to be co-workers with God. If Joshua and the people of Israel hadn’t cooperated with God, it would not happen. And yet without Him and without His intervention we could not possibly do it.

 

Now that is the beautiful balance. So first of all we see a lot of divine intervention in the book of Joshua. We see God’s words and we see His deeds. He makes His promises and He keeps them. He made a solemn covenant which He never broke. Not for one minute did God go back to His word. He had sworn by himself, “By Myself, by God, I will stay with you. If it means punishing you, I’ll punish you. Blessing you, I will bless you but I’m going to stay with you. It is for better or worse for richer or poorer, I am your God.” God can’t tell a lie.

 

I once made of list that God can't do because you know when you think of God almighty, you think He can’t do anything. No He can’t, there are many things God can’t do and the first thing I wrote down is God can’t tell a lie. I have finished up with a list of 31 things that God can’t do. With a shock I realized that I could do everyone of them, does that made me greater than God, NO. Thank God there are some things He can’t do. I will tell you one thing He can’t do, He can’t change the past. once it has happened, even God can’t change it. He can change its effect and its result but he can’t change the event.

 

So God Himself can’t undo the cross, it is happened. God can’t tell a lie, He can’t break a promise. He just can’t, it is against His whole nature. He couldn’t just promise you one thing and not do it, that is God. I think the thing He can’t do is as wonderful as the things that He can do and He can’t break His word.

 

Now we have broken our promise, I’m sure but He can’t it is against His whole character. He can’t make promises with Israel and then go back in it. Thank God for that. It says God gave to Israel all the land He promised to their fathers, He did it.

 

▶And His deeds, He said in the beginning of Joshua, “I will fight for you and I will drive them out, I’ll do it”. That is the meaning of the word Emmanuel.

 

Now I’m going to give you 4 possible meanings of that word and I want you to vote on what you think is correct.

 

1. GOD is with us

2. God IS with us

3. God is WITH us

4. God is with US

 

Now it only means one of those four things. Let’s take a quick vote.

 

That is pretty evenly divided but then the 4th was right. Emmanuel means God is on our side. The emphasis is He is going to fight for us not them. So the emphasis is on US, God is with US. Emmanuel sums up the God who said to Joshua, “I will fight for you; I’m on your side if you are on My side.”

 

And so we have the division of the Jordan River, the collapse of Jericho’s walls, the secession of the manna, another is the battle that they won because of an almighty hail storm, the lengthening of the day in the valley of Ajalon, and another time God sent hornets. And even while the enemy was marching toward them, these harlots came. Now if you can imagine forms of hornets, I tell you, you don’t stand a fight, you run. That is how they won one of the biggest battles, just through hornets.

 

See God controls the insect world again and all His doing is marvelous in their side but the other side is equally important.

 

▶God does it through human cooperation. He did not fight by Himself. They had to be in the battle field, they had to go and God fought for them.

 

Now this is the balance. Some people just say, “OH I’ll leave it to God, He will do it all.” Other people say “Oh I can do it all”. You’ll find it both of those Christians both balanced Christian prays as if all depends on God and work as if it all depends on them. There is a kind of beautiful balance in the Bible here. Without them He would not have done it, they have to go in. he said every bit of land you stand on, I will give it to you but you have to go and stand on it. So without that He would not have done it. If their attitude remain one of the confidence and act of obedience they would win every battle, but if their attitude become self-confidence and their action became disobedience, they lose every battles. That is why the book of Joshua covers 40 years with two major parts of it, the story of Jericho and the story of Ai. If you learn the lessons of those two towns then you set for the conquest of the land. Very interesting isn’t it?

 

▶Well the Bible I have said earlier is a very honest book and it says that they have made 3 mistakes. only three, when they took the land. First was at Ai, they were defeated by superior troops because they have too much self-confidence.

 

The second I have not mention was where one of the tribes already in the land tricked them and they put their tore coats and they put on old shoes and they blacken their faces and they came to the Israelites and they said we came from a distant land because we heard God is with you. Look at our clothes, look at our shoes. We have walked hundreds of miles because we heard about your God. They only came from around the corner. And because they have put on this show, it says Joshua did not ask the Lord above and he was fooled and he made a peace treaty with them. A devastating thing to do and only then discovered that they were just living around the corner and this is a way of escaping defeat. He did not ask God about it so they were tricked.

 

The third time was when the two and a half tribe that is going to live in the far side of Jordan finally went off to claimed their territory. And when they cross the Jordan they put up a can of stones (files of stone) and the tribes on this side of the Jordan said 'Hey they have built an altar so they are not going to be part of us', a misunderstanding among God’s people. And they said to them we are going to fight you and they gathered their army to go and defeat that two and a half tribe, internal misunderstanding. The two and a half tribes said no we have done that to remind our children and the children of our children that we came from your side of the Jordan and they belong with you. The misunderstanding was removed and peace came back. So even in among the people of God there can be misunderstanding when you do not ask God about things.

 

▶Well what is the Christian application of Joshua? In the new testament Joshua is used as an example of faith, Rahab the prostitute was used as an example of faith again and again, Achan is use as an example of sin in the people of God and their corresponding event in the New Testament is Ananias and Sapphira which exactly corresponds to the sin of Achan in the old people of God. And then of course it is used for salvation because in fact, Joshua’s name means salvation, it is originally Hoshea but Jesus changed it to Yeshua which is the same as Jesus that means God saves.

 

When my wife and I moved to the village where we lived the post master was called Mr. Godsaves and it was delightful to visit Mr. Godsaves but in the Hebrew he is actually Mr. Yeshua or Mr. Jesus, Mr. Godsaves.

 

▶And finally what is the Promised Land for the Christians that we are to be brought into. Not heaven, when you sang “When tread the verge of Jordan” I wonder what you were thinking about, were you thinking about death? Because the Promise Land for us is not heaven. The promised land is our holiness. Because the promised land is the rest from "battle". It is the promised land of victory, when you have won the battle and you can enjoy what God asked for you. And because whenever you your own temptation, you have your own foretaste of the rest, don’t you? You have won the battle and there is a rest from the conflict. There remains a Sabbath rest of Hebrew 4 for the people of God. Joshua did not put people in to that rest but there remains a Sabbath rest for us to get into. And it is to cease from our own works, it is to take a holiday from yourself and rest. That is the most holidays we take ourselves away with us that is not rest. But take a holiday from yourself and cease into your own work and enter into the promise land of God’s rest and enjoy his victorious life.

 

There is this book on Joshua I have read, it is Adam Red Pass’ little book, “Victorious Christian Living”. Do get that book. It is how the book of Joshua enables Christians to enter into the promise land of rest to battle. AMEN